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What's the cost?
- As of Aug 10, 2007 granddaughter Kaitlin is doing the
updates under my supervision and we will invoice $10 per new
school setup or update.
Procedures remain the same as when the service was free except that the
completion email will include an
invoice. No further billing will occur, but the
following update will have payment for the previous update as a
prerequisite.
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Can I get the search programs and install them on
my website?
- Currently, no. The search programs run as CGI executables
on a Windows host. Most Windows servers do not allow user
executable programs. Those that do have many controls
(permissions) to minimize the chance that the program will
effect other users. Setting up these programs to run
successfully was not a trivial operation.
- Release of the programs, even for free, would require some sort of an agreement
with the school which
I am not motivated to prepare. If my programs happened to crash your
site's
server, I wouldn't want to be held responsible.
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Aren't there risks in having the search on
a site that I do not control?
- Some schools are understandably nervous about having their
school's name associated with a page that they do not
control. If this is a concern at your school, I
suggest a disclaimer with the search link that you place on your
site.
- Sample disclaimer: This AR Search link
exists on a page outside of xxx school's website. We
have no direct control over the content and do not necessarily
endorse the content of that site.
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What's the catch?
- No catch. I'm a retired programmer running a non-profit
"delphiforfun.org" web site which someday may encourage some
young person to learn programming. I developed the
search originally at the request of my daughter-in-law to help
locate books for one of my three precocious granddaughters.
Once I had the search programs written and running, I realized
that it might be useful to other schools and adding them would
be simple. I admire teachers, have
an interest in education have plenty of disk space, and still
owe a debt to some great teachers from my distant past.
So why not?
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Do you support Scholastic's Reading Counts
or other reading programs?
- Sure. Reading Counts users can get a file extract as
described below. Any other reading program that has four
comparable fields and can get the data into a text file should
work fine. The search programs don't discriminate
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What about updates?
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Currently, we'll update your search file
the same way that we set it up initially. Just send me an
email with a complete replacement file and I'll reformat it and
replace your previous version. I may get ambitious
enough to figure out a more elegant way someday, but so far it
doesn't seem that the files change very
frequently.
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OK, I want a search page for my
school. What should I do?
- Here's all we need to set up a page for your school.
- Make an "export" of your quiz database.
We need the four fields (Title, Author, Reading Level, and Points) in
a single file, Standard exports will include
the Quiz number, which is fine.
Julie H., Media Specialist
at Lutz Elementary in Florida, has graciously
provided a
step-by-step outline of the process for AR 6.x systems.
You can
view it here.
- For earlier versions of AR, here's a
link to a page in the Renaissance Learning knowledge
base that may help. If you get stuck, use
the link at the bottom of this page
to
let me know, and I'll help or put you in touch with
someone who can.
- If you include the school name in the filename
it makes it
easier for me to identify the school when I get future updates, e.g.. myschool.exp.
ot myschool.htm
- Email the file as an attachment together with the name and location of
the school as they are to appear on your web page. If possible, email using your school email address.
Otherwise, we'll do some further verification before
posting.
- That's it. I'll set your page up and send
you the URL for you to review.
When it looks OK, you can publish the link to the page on your
schools' website or otherwise publicize it to students, parents and teachers.
If you have suggestions or questions that I missed, drop me a line at
booksearch@delphiforfun.org
Gary Darby
My programming website home page: http://delphiforfun.org
The Booksearch home page:
http://delphiforfun.org/booksearch
Modified
March 23, 2009
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